


the spaces between songs

by catmittens



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, F/F, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Mommy Issues, also hinata and yachi are mlm/wlw solidarity, it'll be important i promise, it's NOT a songfic the songs are just inspiration, it's basically canon stuff with extra yachi, the kagehina isn't gonna be a big focus but i love them too much to not include it somehow, the team loves yachi very much, watch as i project heavily onto this anime child, yes the yachiruna is going to come!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25835026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catmittens/pseuds/catmittens
Summary: Yachi Hitoka repeatedly panics, repeatedly falls in love, and repeatedly makes friends on accident. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Implied Hinata Shouyo/Kageyama Tobio, Kuribayashi Runa/Yachi Hitoka, Yachi Hitoka & Karasuno Volleyball Club, Yachi Hitoka & Yachi Madoka, Yachi Hitoka/Shimizu Kiyoko (one-sided)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	the spaces between songs

_Took a tour to see the stars_

_But they weren't out tonight_

_So I wished hard on a Chinese satellite_

At 13, Hitoka starts to wonder if she’ll die young.

It isn’t exactly a recurring thought. During lunch, when her stomach is in knots for no particular reason and she can barely swallow her chicken _katsu_ , it burns inside her like a newly struck match. She doesn’t want to blow it out; instead, she cups her hands and protects it. She could never say why.

The students around her look happy. They share snacks and laugh and chat with each other, and it makes her nauseous. Hitoka does not feel human in this moment, and it makes her think about dying. It’s not about _wanting to die_ so much as the actual act.

 _I must be sick_ she thinks, sweat prickling on her hairline ( _Sick_ sounds a little better than _shouldn’t have been born_ ). _That’s why I’m not like them. I’m sick_.

It brings her comfort, like there’s a reason for her to exist in the first place. She’s alive so she can die someday. She doesn’t like cluttering up a world full of people with cheer and with purpose and with places they fit into so comfortably. They probably look at her when she turns her back and frown, wondering why she’s still here. But she is. She’s not brave enough to leave on her own, so she’ll just wait it out.

Hitoka places that flickering match in the carved-out space beneath her chest, in the middle of her sternum. It burns a hollow space there, big enough to hold all the pictures of death and imagined sneers. It holds them like a wall of glass, filling itself with stale air.

At night, she listens to Utada Hikaru and cries herself to sleep (again, for no particular reason). She muffles everything with her comforter so Mom won’t hear her as she gets back from a late night at work. In the morning when Mom asks how she slept, Hitoka fixes a smile on her face and swallows the pain like a bitter pill.

As bad as that all feels, it never really matches the burgeoning frustration that she might, in fact, be like this for the rest of her life, depending on how long that lasts. She wonders if she should start graphing this out just in case.

Well, Hitoka doesn’t do that. She goes to school, eats her lunch, studies hard, etc. She turns 14, then 15. She’s still alive.

By the end of middle school, she has no close friends. Trying to make them is out of the question. There are all sorts of girls (nice girls, sweet girls, funny girls), but Hitoka looks at them and sees all the bright sparkling pieces that she’s missing. She smiles at their compliments and _good mornings_ while an earthquake threatens to tear her chest apart.

It’s all nerves. At least that’s what her mother says. And her teachers. And the family doctor. And the school nurse. _Calm down, Hitoka. Calm down. Calm down. You have to breathe, Hitoka._

The thought of her hypothetical death being at the hands of a particularly bad ulcer comes to mind at least once a day. Said thought is quickly rolled into a neat little bundle and stored away for a later date, and if it’s unhealthy to treat her worries like towels to be put away in the closet, Hitoka can’t bear to contemplate that.

Instead, she tries to breathe.

Trying to stay calm may not work, but it gives her something to focus on for getting through her first year of high school. The first half anyway.

When Shimizu Kiyoko speaks to her, Hitoka imagines a thousand different ways this could come crashing down like a particularly sparkly chandelier. When Shimizu leaves, she begins to shake herself out of her daze and looks down at her hand that Shimizu had briefly grabbed, looking for stars on her fingertips. She looks and looks and wonders.

The boys’ volleyball club offers itself like a life raft, like the fleet of attempted clubs before it. Hitoka takes a breath and grabs for it, exhaling when it doesn’t tip her back into the churning ocean. Even after she flees in her usual panic, she knows that for just a moment, she stayed above water. She realizes that she wants to try again.

The match inside her flickers dangerously. _Don’t go out yet,_ she tells it.

***

Hinata Shouyo is… a lot.

He yells, he jumps, he pushes. It’s a lot. It makes Yachi wonder how in the world she couldn’t remember his name.

The other boy with dark hair (“ _Kageyama_ ” she sternly reminds herself) follows him into the classroom like an actual shadow and doesn’t say much, although the way they talk to each other suggests their dynamic is something more on the prickly side. Their volleyball talk makes her head spin trying to keep track of the terms they use, but they seem to like her methods of studying (Practically the only thing about herself she’s fine with). It feels… nice? Yes, “nice” is a good enough way to describe it.

Well, it’s nice until she realizes that Hinata’s not another manager, but a regular. She scrambles for a proper apology that doesn’t involve slamming her head into her desk, but he laughs it off in far less time than it takes for her to remember to _breathe, Hitoka_.

There isn’t a long list of things that Yachi has absolute faith in. Faith put in people or a system, faith that life will get better as it goes on, it all crumbles so easily. Her faith is a tenuous thing that doesn’t like to show itself. So, when Hinata locks eyes with her and declares _I can fly!_ she doesn’t know how to respond. If anything, though, she finds herself wishing for such levels of confidence.

It doesn’t take her long for the team, Shimizu and this motley crew of boys, to utterly fascinate her. They all seem like such wildly different people, but the entire time she’s in that gym she can tell that they _know_ each other. Hitoka has never felt _known_ in her life, not even by Mom. She’s Villager B, the one who stands to the side. She’s not supposed to have anyone look at her and really, really see. But somehow Shimizu, beautiful Shimizu Kiyoko, took her hand and led her closer to the main stage.

(Trying to describe this feeling isn’t easily done. Hitoka isn’t exactly bad with words, but trying to get others to understand is hard when they’ve been following their own path from the beginning. She doesn’t know yet that they’ve all shed their own tears, struggled with their own weaknesses.)

Hitoka isn’t good at having faith, in herself or anything, really.

But then—

She stands in the gym, off to the side, watching Hinata leap impossibly high and spike the ball to the ground with a _slap_ that echoes in her ears. She watches him make good on his words and fly, and she thinks to herself _I want to believe_. _I want to believe._

The sky is a vast, endless thing, and she wants to reach for it the way he does, while she’s still above water.

***

Hitoka just wants her mother to see her.

She used to feel like one of the luckiest girls in the world to be the daughter of such an amazing woman. Her birth father abandoned them both before Hitoka was even born, but Yachi Madoka closed the curtain on that part of her life as promptly as she could. Their family is sparse, but supportive, and it’s more than enough.

Madoka has always been Hitoka’s beacon of light, a goddess of strength, all sorts of words that mean something like _queen_. Hitoka is now 15, and she feels like a phantom in her mother’s world. She’s no princess in a storybook kingdom or someone who catches the light in her hands. Mom’s eyes are puzzled when they look her over sometimes, like she’s looking at a stranger who wandered in by accident.

She wants Mom to see her and really look at her, sharp gaze melting as she says _Hitoka! There you are!_

Now that she’s going to stay with the volleyball club, Hitoka is trying to piece together what she’s going to say to make this happen. Her heart pounds in nervous anticipation whenever she imagines it, doing its best to cheer her on. Her brain scoffs and gestures to the fragile ecosystem that she is made up of, insisting that it will collapse completely if she pushes herself any further.

They are both technically herself, but Hitoka wonders if she can’t dig deeper for another “self,” something built out of steel instead of clay. Maybe no one knows what Villager B is made of, but what does it matter? Can’t Villager B fight, too? If not for the world, at least for herself?

That’s what she wants to say to her mother.

Whatever confidence she lacks, Hinata seems to more than make up for as he pulls her along by the hand. This isn’t _exactly_ the way she had planned to do this. He’s ungodly fast for one thing, and Hitoka can feel her brain rattling around in her head as she tries to keep up.

It’s all out of a manga, but she knows she wouldn’t make for a very compelling heroine. Still, when she finally yells out to Mom exactly what she’s been wanting to say, she knows that she’s standing center stage. Her face burns and her hair is probably an awful mess but for once, the fear isn’t enough to weigh her down.

Before Hitoka and Madoka part ways, Hitoka swears that her mother’s eyes are wet. Hinata shouts with joy, and Hitoka does, too.

***

That night, Hitoka lays under her blankets, staring at the ceiling. Mom is likely asleep in her own room next to Hitoka’s. When they had eaten dinner together, it was a pleasant surprise for the mood to be so light.

Now, Hitoka unconsciously places her hands together below her chest. They cup the match with the flame that's forever burning.

Earlier, Hinata had grabbed her hand to pull her along. Before that, Shimizu had taken the other hand in gratitude. Once more, she looks at her palms and fingers and imagines them holding stars, freely given to her instead of falling from the sky.

The glass walls inside of her are breaking, and that hollow space begins to fill with stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Chinese Satellite was 100% the song that made me want to start writing this. Thanks, Phoebe.


End file.
